The contemporary French are quite ambivalent when it comes to war. Along with Britain, France is the only European country with a real military potential (nuclear weapons, a rapid deployment force, a navy, a large armament and space industry) and is intent on keeping it that way (an impressive “French Pentagon” is currently under construction in South Paris). Successive administrations, both conservative and socialist, have engaged in military or peacekeeping operations abroad over the past forty years with or without an international warrant: in Subsaharan Africa, from Chad in the early 1970s to Mali earlier this year; in Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya from the late 1970s to today; and in Bosnia and Serbia in 1995 and 1999. As long as military deaths are kept comparatively low or non-existent, civilians are not harmed, and risks are seen as minimal, there is almost no criticism or dissent.

The French enjoy feeling like a Great Power, and being a military power is evidently part of that deal. On the other hand, the French realize that they are only a Little Great Power, just like the British, and that their military potential is in fact quite limited.

Their defense budget ranks sixth in the world, and is less than one tenth of the U.S. defense budget ($59 billion to $682 billion). Subsaharan Africa is probably the only place where France can act alone, and even there, the latest operation — against Islamists in Mali — was backed in many ways by the United States. Everywhere else, they have no choice but to be America’s junior partners, unless they drop from the scene altogether. They have been uneasy about this dilemma; it has elicited much resentment. Jacques Chirac’s desistment from the second Iraq war in 2003 — a rare instance where the French asserted their Great Power status by opposing an American operation — was very popular for that reason.

Hollande decided to join forces with Barack Obama on Syria on several assumptions. First, he thought that France could not stay away from a momentous U.S. intervention in the Middle East without relinquishing its status as a Great Power with special authority on Middle Eastern issues. Second, he thought that backing the Obama administration would be more popular than just backing America, especially among his own voters, and that “protecting Muslims” in Syria would please the French Muslim vote, which overwhelmingly supports the Left. Third, since he had slightly benefited from the successful Mali campaign last spring in terms of personal popularity, he was looking for at least a similar boost in the case of a Syrian campaign.

Hollande may have misread the situation on all accounts. What was supposed to be Obama’s major show of force has been marred with dithering and shilly-shallying and a fierce political debate at home. Obama’s popularity is waning everywhere, including among his erstwhile liberal and radical supporters. And if the whole Syrian charade ends up with a Russian diplomatic victory, Hollande may be criticized for not having emulated Chirac’s move on Iraq in some measure.

There is a modicum of solace for France and the French president, however, in the fact that the status of all Great Powers is being questioned in the wake of the Syrian crisis. France and Britain may be Little Great Powers, but Russia is not much more in spite of its diplomatic virtuosity, and Russia may have overstretched itself in challenging the United States on this issue. China may be a formidable potential player in international affairs, including in the Middle East, but China still lacks a global military capacity. As for the United States, it still is the only Super Power, but its global reach, under the Obama administration or any similarly inadequate leadership, may quickly evaporate.

People are becoming weary of war, but even more they are becoming weary of being lied to and emotionally manipulated by their elected representatives. People in the main are not geniuses but they do have common sense and pragmatic intelligence; to tell them that they must rain high explosives onto a country that has not attacked them because of a "moral duty" does not add up and they know it.

French citizens have little interest in joining Obama against Assad.Neither do American citizens or British citizens or German citizens or Australian citizens or ... have any interest in helping out head choppers.

Morality aside, Hollande comes off as more stoopid than anything. He wasn't paying attention to what was really going on with Obama and his stated intentions? His diplomatic and intelligence services didn't keep him informed?

No national leader with any sense would want to attach his country's blood and treasure to a profoundly unserious Operation Save Obama's Face.

A traditional and predictable undercurrent of bluster and wishful thinking runs through this article, very French in all directions -- especially the religious need to tilt at the British (always reciprocated by the British in a kind of infantile two-step) and to crow about France's military prowess today. If you have time to doodle a bit, google the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle and also force de frappe (strike force); the latter underwent a name change after mocking American references to force de crappe.

No accident that the rooster is the French nat'l emblem, appropriate not just because of endless crowing but because the bird is a high-plumage strutter that carries on singing even when it’s knee-deep in cow sh*t. A new Pentagon-like building, eh, soon to be filled with armchair warriors. Wow!

Reality: France’s socialist state is now unraveling, sinking under a sea of debt and inefficiency; the fan will be hit sooner not later, maybe next year. To be truly vulgar: It’s taken the Krauts 100 years to get the Frogs where they want them.

The French are at least as ignorant as we are and much lazier, only they often eat better. A preposterous people, not to be trusted.

You can blame that psychopath philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Jacobins for France's current nature. Before the French Revolution and the horrors that had occurred (including Vendee), France was a devoutly Catholic, or at least devoutly Christian country. There was a reason why France was once considered a second Vatican, and why its nickname was the second Rome. However, thanks to Rousseau's Emile and his works, not to mention those of Marquis de Sade and Voltaire, the French underwent a violent revolution nearly mirroring what Marx would blueprint and what Lenin would put to practice in Russia, and butchered several Christians, even orchestrating the unofficial first genocide in Europe by Europeans since Rome salted Carthage. From what I've read and heard of France in both movies/video games and even in real life (the latter by a film professor who was a flaming hard-left individual), France is morally bankrupt right now. Heck, a World article even labeled 3/4ths of the populace of France as enjoying the moral and spiritual disaster that was May 1968, or at least viewing it positively. It also doesn't help that the game "Peace Walker," via the character Cecile Cosima Caminandes, when describing the event (to which she explicitly commented that free love and dismantling old traditions was the main known focus of the riots), even implied that literally every single female in Paris, if not France in general, had become sultry harlots as a result of May 1968. I'm still awaiting verification as to whether that was actually true from the real Cecile Caminandes, among other things.

BTW, Gurfinkel, I've repeatedly requested this multiple times, but you apparently have never responded, so please, since I am autistic and thus I have great difficulty in perceiving non-verbal answers especially on the web, I really need you to consider and either do this request or at least respond with a no and reasons why: Dismantle or rename the institute you currently are leading, as Rousseau is by no means a Conservative. Heck, he's actually called the founder of modern liberalism/the father of the left, not a conservative. Heck, he and his teachings butchered a lot of people, Christians, and it indirectly led to Nazi Germany's actions and persecutions of Jewish people and even some of Stalin's actions. Heck, Pol Pot was even trying to implement Rousseau's work into his Year Zero campaign in Cambodia, which was one of the most bloody events in the 20th century in terms of percentages and time rate of people butchered.

People are becoming weary of war, but even more they are becoming weary of being lied to and emotionally manipulated by their elected representatives. People in the main are not geniuses but they do have common sense and pragmatic intelligence; to tell them that they must rain high explosives onto a country that has not attacked them because of a "moral duty" does not add up and they know it.

French citizens have little interest in joining Obama against Assad.Neither do American citizens or British citizens or German citizens or Australian citizens or ... have any interest in helping out head choppers.